UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angelique Kidjo was at the United Nations Friday 12 July in support of Malala Yousafzai’s crusade.
The Grammy Award Winner is also passionate about the education of girls, particularly in Africa.
UN Radio’s Leda Letra caught up with Angelique and they talked about her impressions of Malala.
Duration: 2’02”
Youth representatives from around the world are at the United Nations on Friday to celebrate the birthday of a young woman whose bravery and integrity have inspired people everywhere.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating for girls’ education, turned 16 amid applause from her peers, her family and senior UN officials.
“What Malala has is belief in her cause which is that everyone should have opportunity and rights to education but also this incredible willpower that even an attempted assassination has never taken away from her”. That’s what Gordon Brown, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Global Education and the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom said about Malala Yousafzai.
Normal
0
false
false
false
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
When a nation has had its administrative and governance systems shattered during war and conflict, how feasible is it to try to start generating revenue locally? Is it right to ask people who are just recovering from war to start paying taxes?
Issues like these were raised during a recent event in New York organized by the UN Peacebuilding Support Office and the International Peace Institute looking at how countries emerging from conflict can strengthen peacebuilding through domestic revenue generation or taxes.
Establishing smoke-free public spaces and putting health warnings on cigarette packages are among the measures that are helping to protect millions of people from the harmful effects of tobacco.
In fact, more than two billion people worldwide are now covered by these or other life-saving measures which limit tobacco use, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Dianne Penn reports.
Duration: 2'25"
Education for girls is not a priority in her country Ethiopia, says Bogaletch Gebre, a women’s rights activist, stressing that their priority is taking care of the family and household chores.
When she was six or seven years old, an opportunity presented itself where an educated female relative came to visit and taught her the Amharic alphabet.
“Overnight, I finished the 260-some characters,” recounts Bogaletch, adding that “the next day, these characters started dancing in my head and nothing could stop me."
The World Food Programme (WFP) warns that a lack of funding could affect food distribution to Syrian refugees as early as this month.
Muhannad Hadi, WFP Emergency Coordinator for Syria, says the agency requires $27 million each week to distribute rations to more than five million people in the country or who have fled to neighbouring states.
Hadi is in New York on Tuesday to update journalists on WFP’s work in Syria. With needs mounting and the crisis deepening, he fears WFP will not be able to bring “food and hope” beyond August.
David and his wife Amitu arrived in Tripoli, Libya in the middle of its Arab spring revolution in 2011. Their long and arduous journey started by crossing the Sahara desert from Eritrea, to Sudan into Libya.
The couple faced considerable challenges in their perilous journey as they are both deaf and mute.
Fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region has displaced an estimated 300,000 people so far this year which is more than the past two years combined, according to UN estimates.
The people are escaping inter-ethnic community violence, or conflict between rebel movements and government forces, much of which is driven by the struggle for resources such as land, water, cattle and gold.
The UN Humanitarian Affairs office (OCHA) says those on the run desperately need food, medical supplies and shelter to survive sweltering desert temperatures.
